Store - Categories & Catalog

January 11, 2018

Product Reordering is now called Catalog. You can now group your products into categories to make it easier for customers to find them by category. We made it easier to create, edit and remove categories. Learn how the new “Featured” & “Sale” categories work below.

Create/Edit/Delete a Category:

Creating a New Category:

1. Navigate to the Store, and click on the Products tab.

2. In the product edit window, in the right hand pane, find the Categories section, and click the gray "Edit" link to open the "Categories" modal window.

3. At the bottom of the modal, click "Add a New Category" to create a new category.

4. In the "Category Details" modal window that opens, give your category a Title. (Note: You can choose any name you like, as long as it isn't the same as that of another category).

5. Specify a Path Name for your category by clicking in the “URL Path” box. The path name should have no spaces or special characters. By default your path will be populated based on your category name, however, you have the option to customize this. We recommend using hyphens as delimiters, and avoiding short, uninformative words like "the". Example: "new-womens-tops" Changes are automatically saved.

Please note: if you change your path name after your category has been created, it will change the URL structure and may cause a broken link.

Best Practices: We suggest not changing your path name once your category has been created and live in your store. For example: If you have a category called “Holiday Gift Guide” and choose to change it to "Spring Gift Guide", and decide to change the path name, that category path name may not be visible to your customers

6. You have the option to mark the category as hidden. A hidden category (and all of its descendant categories) won't be visible on your public site. Hidden categories are marked in the admin interface with a closed-eye icon. Once you’re ready to display your categories publicly, uncheck the hidden setting.

Deleting a Category

1. In the product edit window, in the right hand pane, find the Categories section, and click the gray "Edit" link to open the "Categories" modal window.

2. Open the Categories modal window, and click on the circled "X" button to the right of the category. *Note: Remember, deletions can't be reverted. Once you delete the category, the category will immediately be removed from your store.

The products in your category will still be live on your site, they just will no longer live in that category since the category was removed.

Editing a Category

1. In the product edit window, in the right hand pane, find the Categories section, and click the gray "Edit" link to open the "Categories" modal window.

2. In the Categories modal window, click on an existing category. This opens the “Category Details” modal. The options in this modal are the same as those that appear when creating a category. Make your desired changes and click the Save button.

Sequencing and Nesting Categories

1. In the product edit window, in the right hand pane, find the Categories section, and click the gray "Edit" link to open the "Categories" modal window.

2. The Categories modal window shows a sortable list of all the categories in your Catalog. Using the grip handles at the left edge of each category, drag a category higher or lower in the list to change its order.

Note: Moving a category item to the left or right as you drag it allows you to create nested hierarchies of categories within categories. Each category will contain all of the items in its subcategories.If a product belongs to a parent category but not to a subcategory, then the product will be displayed under the parent category name only. Any products in a parent category that also belong to a subcategory will be displayed in both that parent category and subcategory.

For example: if you have Accessories as the Parent Category and Pins as the subcategory, the items in Pins will also appear in Accessories, however, if you have additional products in the Accessories category that aren't assigned to any subcategories, then they will only show up in the Parent category Accessories.

3. Changes are automatically saved when you’re in this modal, simply click the X at the bottom of the modal or click out of the modal.

Adding a Store Item to a Category (existing functionality remains the same)

1. Navigate to the Store, and click on the Products tab.

2. In the left pane, you will see a list of all your store items.

Note: Items that are currently hidden will be marked with a closed-eye icon.

Items in the special "Sale" category that aren't yet on sale, but are scheduled for a future sale, will be marked with a calendar icon.

3. Click on the store item you want to add to your category.

4. In the right hand pane, find the Categories section, and expand it by clicking the dropdown arrow, to show all of your store's categories.

5. Then click the round checkbox to the right of the category you want to add the selected product to.

Note: There is no limit to the number of categories a store item can be added to, so be sure to place it in all relevant categories. There is also no limit to the number of items you can have in a category, but we suggest that you keep things reasonable for the sake of your customers.

Change the Sort Order For The Products In a Category

1. Navigate to the Store, and click on the Catalog tab.

2. In the left column, you will see a list of your categories, including a special "All Items" category which includes all of your items.

3. Click on one of the categories, which will populate the right column with a grid of all the items in that category.

4. Using the drag handle at the top of a store item, drag the product into the new desired order. Alternately, you can manually sort items using the numeric inputs at the top right of each store item. Type the new sort number, and press tab or return to move the item’s position.

5. Publish your changes by clicking "Save" at the bottom.

Note: Updates won’t be instant…changes in display order may take up to a few minutes to reflect on the website. If you've made changes to the order of a category's store items, please remember to save your changes, otherwise you will lose your changes.

Understanding the Sale Category

The Sale category by default will be live on your site. It can be renamed or hidden, but not deleted.

Note: If you currently have items on sale or scheduled to be on sale, we have migrated your old sale items to the new Sale category. If your account didn’t have any sale items, you won’t have a sale category. However, when you create your first sale (or future sale) item, the Sale category will be created.

Once it has been created, the Sale category will alway be a part of your category structure. You can hide the Sale Category, but you can’t delete it. If you don’t have any products in the sale category, but you created a sale category, the category will be visible but no products within the category will be visible.

Note: Hiding and showing of the Sale category isn’t tied to the sale scheduling of individual store items. If all of your sale items reach the end of their scheduled sale period, the Sale category will still be visible. (It just won’t contain any items).If you want to hide or show the Sale category, you will need to do so manually.

Updating the Sale Category:

1. Select a product from your store within the Product tab

2. On the right hand pane, mark the item on sale using the "On Sale" section of the Products tab, or by using the scheduling functionality.

3. Click Save.

4. Your items will then automatically appear in the Sale category.

“Featured” Toggle for Products no Longer Affects Sort Order

In an older version of Fullscreen Direct, store items tagged as featured were automatically moved to the top of the product list, pinning them to the start of the list. Essentially pinning products to the top. Now that the Catalog-based sorting is available, this functionality has changed. You can now edit your featured product order via store categories

When we launch the Catalog feature, we will do a one-time migration of currently-featured products into a category called “Featured”. If you previously used the “Featured” toggle to pin your featured product, please confirm that the sort order on your site is displaying as expected. Moving forward, you can edit your featured section just as you would with any of your other categories.

Some site’s themes have custom functionality to display featured products with a special flag, badge, or color scheme. For these accounts, you can still tag a product as featured via the star icon, which will turn on these custom styling options.

Note - If you aren’t using custom styles for featured products, you can now ignore the star icon. If you're interested in adding featured product customization to your website, contact your Account Services representative.